


Grief is another name for love

by Tabata



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 18:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18287426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: When Shannen dies, Celes' scream is agonizing.





	Grief is another name for love

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, Shannen is not really dead in the game because four teams fought to keep him alive. But I needed to write this, just for the sake of it.  
> ~ This work is inspired by the COW-T verse, created for the "Clash of the Writing Titans" challenge by Lande di Fandom's admin.
> 
> Written for: Lande di Fandom's COW-T #9  
> prompt: Cow-T

When Shannen dies, Celes's scream is agonizing.

It feels as if Langley had emptied himself out and all he was is coming out of Celes's body in that one single heartbreaking cry to the sky. They both throw themselves at Shannen's body, holding him tight to prevent him from going where they cannot follow him. Langley is the only one to hear the very last beat of Shannen's heart, that final _thump_ that takes away their lives with it. 

Celes doesn't let them take away the body. He asks – no, he orders – for Shannen to be left in the burial chamber. He cleans him and he changes his clothes, and he doesn't want any help with it. He uses a spell to freeze him in time and he creates a space around himself and Shannen where nobody else is allowed. Langley refuses to see him, instead. He doesn't want to live with the memory of Shannen lying on that bed with his eyes closed. He wants to remember him alive with his constant distaste for anything and anyone, with the powerful, weird way he loved them.

It takes days to sink in, the notion that they are not three anymore, that in the world they know – and those Celes can reach – there's no place where Shannen is. Their heart feels suddenly split in half, trying to reform the one that stopped beating. They try to take Celes away from the burial room, but he doesn't come out until Langley himself goes get him. That's the only time they let Langley inside the inner sanctum of the palace – because there's no other choice, Celes won't let go of Shannen otherwise – but then they politely ask him to step back again. Langley doesn't fight. He knows his place, he knows how it works, and he doesn't have the strength to ask for more right now.

Celes stops living. He locks himself in his room and refuses to do anything. He doesn't want to see Langley either and Langley understands why. Seeing him would re-open a wound that's hardly closing as it is. It's always been _Shannen and Langley_ and right now Langley alone is not enough. His presence marks the indisputable absence of Shannen. He waits. He finds himself a place where he doesn't bother anyone, close enough to feel Celes, but not too much, so they won't send him away. Every day Lacros goes to his nephew's room to convince him to come out. Every day he comes back alone. He and Langley exchanges a look that says _We need to talk_ but none of them ever speaks a word.

Dragging Celes out of his room is an act of violence and he himself responds with force. He screams and cusses and curses, he trashes around like a wild animal. “I don't want to,” he screams, scratching Lacros' face. “Let go of me!” It takes three people to hold him still. None of them hugs him, though.

Shannen died three weeks ago and the air in the palace has been so tense that Lacros finally snaps. Langley can almost hear something switch inside of him before the dam of his self-control cracks and then collapses, letting the words of his frustration free to hurt him. They weren't meant for him, but he hears them anyway because he's right outside the man's office, one step away from knocking and asking if he can do something. “I don't know what do to anymore,” Lacros is saying, pacing up and down the room. Langley can see his shadow moving underneath the door. “I've tried everything.”

“You have to give him time to mourn,” Lænton says, patiently, welcoming his husband's anger upon himself and absorbing it, trying to give only reasonable calmness back to him. “He lost one of his lovers.”

“He lost the wrong one, if you asks me!”

Langley recoils from the door and from those words that burn the way the sun would if he was a real vampire. He would like to run, but his entire body feels suddenly heavy, so he just slides against the wall, hugging his longs legs to his chest. Deep down he knows he should stop listening to them right now. But he got to stay here while Shan is gone, the least he can do is to bear the consequence of his own undeserved luck.

“Lacros, that's an horrible thing to say!” Lænton says, softly.

“But it is the truth!” The High Priest says, coming to stand right behind the closed door, a mere few inches away from Langley, curled up on the floor. “What do you think it's going to happen now? We can't have a half vampire as the seer's spouse. It is against the law and it wouldn't be proper anyway.”

Langley can't see Lænton, but he can imagine his contrite expression. “Celes is in pain right now, dear,” he says eventually, after a long pause. “But I'm sure he will be reasonable when the time comes.”

“As he's been so far?” There's no sarcasm in Lacros' voice, but a mix of worry and grief. “That kid is as stubborn as his mother! He kept going on with that nonsense of being with two people at the same time, and now what? I thought, in time, we were going to convince him to marry Shannen and be done with it, but there's no way he's going to listen to any of us now and find someone else.”

“I think this is a problem for later on,” Lænton insists, ever so softly. “The kid is grieving, we can't expect him to react the right way just now. Let this pass, let's wait a little longer. I'm sure Celes will see reason and will do the right thing.”

“I'm not sure about that,” Lacros admits with a sigh. “That's why I'm so worried.”

“You said it yourself, my dear.” Lænton's shadow gets closer to Lacros'. “He's as stubborn as his mother. The more you pressure him, the less incline he will be to do what you ask of him. You need to be more conciliatory. Antagonizing him won't help you.”

“Being conciliatory with Manila has never led to anything.”

“Manila took some decisions we both decided to ignore, don't you think?” Lænton says. That's something weird to say, but Langley has no time nor will to muse on it. Slowly, he stands up, scratching the back of his neck and pulling at his own hair, an unconscious gesture of discomfort he hasn't done in a long time. Lacros' words are stuck deep down in his head.

What the High Priest said is an incontestable truth. His death would have not created so much problems. Celes and Shan could have married without the need of changing any law. Celes would have been as sad as he is now – of that Langley is sure, it has never been a matter of whom Celes loved the most between the two of them – but at least he wouldn't have had to fight to be with someone he wants in the attempt to keep having a life, provided that a life _is_ possible for them without Shannen. Langley's presence as much as Shannen's absence makes his life worse.

Langley knows what would be the right thing to do, he's just not sure he has the courage to do it. His heart is already broken in half, he can't afford to lose another piece. And yet, wouldn't he do it if that meant to give Celes some peace? He was lucky enough to be _chosen_ by someone like him in the first place. Wouldn't be only fair to show gratefulness for that, doing the only thing he really can? Especially when he wasn't strong enough to do what he should have done all those months ago. Shan has sacrificed himself to save Celes from Celestia, now it's his turn too.

He's about to walk away from the door when he meets Celes' eyes in the dark. It's the first time he comes out of his bedroom in days. He looks unwell and yet he looks beautiful to him. “My garden rose,” he says in a whisper. He exaggerates, but the sight of Celes always fills him with awe. “I didn't hear you.”

And somehow Celes reads on his face all that has passed through his mind in the past few minutes – Langley doesn't know if it's his seer power or just his love for him that allows him that. But Celes knows _exactly_ what he wants to do and he frowns in pain. “Please, don't,” he says, fighting to put those words out as if his voice had dried out after so many days spent in silence. “I can't lose you too.”

Celes throws himself in his arms and they hug for the first time since Shannen died.


End file.
